


Irrevocable Condition

by cognomen



Category: King Arthur (2004)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, farming, non-canon children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-22 13:46:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3731134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Restlessness creeps in only slowly, finding cracks and toeholds in the busy spin of productive consciousness. It builds up that way, sediment at the bottom of a fast moving stream. At the surface, the water runs on, until the silt rises enough to stop or divert it.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>They are not there yet. Galahad can't help but be aware of it there, of the raising level of it that must grow in Tristan as the summer reaches its height. Their garden grows - though with objective eyes, Galahad can see that it seems sparse and ragged in comparison to the neatly tended rows of their neighbors.</i></p><p>  <i>In the nest above the chimney, the young hawks bat their wings and contemplate the sky. It will soon be their domain. Galahad tries not to imagine the same dark-eyed and fierce expression on Tristan when the he former knight stands alone and quiet in the spaces between the green rows. </i></p><p>A sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1772986">Postwar</a>, though this can be read without, it makes more sense with.  Welcome to Tristhad Week</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Restlessness creeps in only slowly, finding cracks and toeholds in the busy spin of productive consciousness. It builds up that way, sediment at the bottom of a fast moving stream. At the surface, the water runs on, until the silt rises enough to stop or divert it.

They are not there yet. Galahad can't help but be aware of it there, of the raising level of it that must grow in Tristan as the summer reaches its height. Their garden grows - though with objective eyes, Galahad can see that it seems sparse and ragged in comparison to the neatly tended rows of their neighbors.

In the nest above the chimney, the young hawks bat their wings and contemplate the sky. It will soon be their domain. Galahad tries not to imagine the same dark-eyed and fierce expression on Tristan when the he former knight stands alone and quiet in the spaces between the green rows. 

It would not worry him so if he trusted Tristan to let them take wing together, rather than to leave Galahad behind, still watching the sky. It has not happened yet, though the silt rises when Galahad steps into their home in the evening and finds Tristan rolling his aching shoulders, or with a cool cloth pressed to ease the mass of scars over his ribs. 

"Bors' children are getting too large to let them climb you anymore," Galahad says, letting the sheer green cloth fall closed behind him. It kept away bugs and dimmed some of the hot summer sunlight to shade, letting only the breeze through. He had traded a dozen well-balanced and fletched arrows for it, and in the warm nights had found it invaluable.

Tristan is slow to respond, folding the expression of pain away, like easing sweet cinnamon into bread dough without destroying how much it has risen. Galahad knows him too well for Tristan to disguise it fully, and knows better than to overtly fuss.

"It was the twins this time," Tristan admits. "They cannot quite drag themselves up, so they insist instead on dragging me down."

Galahad laughs, stripping off his sweaty linen shirt, leaning to press his mouth affectionately against the crown of Tristan's head as he passes. The twins were just beginning to crawl. Guinevere had rejected Arthur's name suggestions and instead named them as proper Picts, Dunndubhan and Harviu. They were not a quite matched set, already bearing dark curls, the blue eyes they had been born with darkening and changing. 

No one mentions how little they resemble Arthur. He loves the boys,and even Galahad would admit to being charmed by them.

"Well at least you kept them from tearing up Merlin's medicinal garden," Galahad allows. The two babies had found the blooming plants irresistible in their first weeks of crawling, and had made a mess of it and themselves. Guinevere had laughed - the blue streaks were haphazard, but she had called it war-paint nonetheless

" _Kept_ them?"" Tristan answers, all mischief despite his stiff position. 

"Well, you're too clean to have helped them," Galahad observes. From a basket on their small table he pulls a heel of bread to which he sets his teeth, settling down across from Tristan with a smile.

"How did the hunt go?" Tristan diverts the conversation away from himself before it can turn to concern. Galahad allows it.

"Well, save that all we found was a wayward goat herd that must have escaped when we left the wall."

"Goats are edible," Tristan says.

"But not much sport," Galahad agrees. It had not stopped the Picts from bringing one down, though it meant that Galahad had hesitated a moment too long on his shot. It felt wrong to shoot something that stared at him placidly, stupidly expectant.

"Is that why you're eating stale bread?"

Galahad laughs at Tristan's usual perceptiveness.

"No. I failed to hit, so it's my duty to clean the carcasses," Galahad wrinkles his nose. "I'm eating while I still have the stomach for it."

"You'll regain your appetite to smell it cooking," Tristan suggests. Perhaps it's so, but he is hungry now and does not have blood and gore trapped beneath his ragged fingernails to spoil the bread. 

"If so I'll eat from your plate," he threatens, finishing his meal. He stands then, and stops in front of Tristan to hold out his hand for the wet cloth. Tristan obliges him, and Galahad refreshes it in the cold water of the ewer so that it will bring fresh relief.

He is pressing it back onto Tristan's chest, working his fingers gently against Tristan's side to ease the pain in his damaged muscles when Tristan eases his fingers absently through Galahad's hair. 

"They'll fly soon," he says distantly,and Galahad's worry crawls up his throat as if to choke him. He swallows it down and says nothing. When the hawks fly, Tristan will go. Galahad cannot know for how long, if it will be the time Tristan goes forever by intent or by accident. He is not the soldier he once was, though he has fewer enemies now.

Not all those north of the wall are as tame as Merlin's tribe, and there are still great beasts in the land. Galahad knows that to voice his fear is to cast a chain lariat at a wild horse. It will not catch Tristan, but drive him faster away.

Instead, he looks up at Tristan with his hands still on the man's skin and sees how far away his dark eyes look. Galahad supposes this is where he's chosen to plant his heart, shifting sands and ocean tides. He leans up and kisses Tristan gently, with his hands still spread over Tristan's damaged skin. The hard raised ridges are like mountains beneath Galahad's fingertips.

When he draws back, Tristan's eyes have come near again, focused. Warm. Galahad _breathes_.

"They'll fly soon," he agrees, "but not today. Not with Coneseca stuffing their mouths every time they come open."

Tristan strokes cool, damp fingers in a gentle line up Galahad's neck, from adam's apple to the point of his chin. It is the sort of affection he gives the bird; gentle, reverent touches. 

The sensation of cool water takes a long time to evaporate from Galahad's skin.

-

"How's that miserable excuse for a tended plot of land faring?" Bors demands, standing at the low rough-board fence surrounding it, ever amused by the sight of Tristan or Galahad flailing about in the dirt and greens, trying to differentiate food from weeds, to keep their plants from going black with too much wet or withering in the sun. His amusement does not much bother Galahad - he can see well the humor in it, and he does not need scout's eyes to do so.

"We've finally convinced Tristan's horse to stop pissing in it," Galahad answers - humorous but the truth. "We may be farmers, yet."

Bors guffaws, and thumps Galahad once on the shoulder in good humor, hard enough to sting. "It's a fair bit better than my woman's trained our boys. Gilly's forever peeing on whatever takes his fancy."

Galahad notes to mind the boy on his property, though Gilly seems to have grown past the age at which children found Tristan interesting, and instead taken a shining to Arthur. Galahad is amused by the boy constantly following Arthur around with paternal advice gleaned from his nine years in a house flooded with his younger siblings; a tiny, wise old sage. That the advice is usually utterly useless seems to be of no mind to the boy.

"And your wife?" Galahad asks, as is proper. He had seen her just yesterday when he'd delivered a healthy share of goat's meat for her and her brood.

"Bigger every day," Bors answers. It is a very fair assessment. "I hope she hasn't taken any ideas from Guinevere."

"Twins, you think?" It seems lucky, a sign of prosperity to have two sets born so close together.

"Nah, just not _Lancelot's_ , I'm praying," Bors grins at Galahad, wide and half-wild. It suits him to be here, to be dark with the sun and the sweat of his efforts. "We've enough of his ghost to haunt us already, the bastard."

"We all miss him," Galahad agrees, taking the true meaning behind Bors' gruff words, enduring the halfhearted dirty look he earns in response. "Though his children are the bastards, not him."

"Don't let Arthur hear that," Bors says, though the first implication had been his. Galahad tips his head in agreement.The boys would never know they weren't Arthur's, never go unloved for their dark eyes and curls.The whole village doted on them, though the youth seemed to belong to the Picts as a whole - now bolstered by the massive influx of Bors' children.

"I won't," Galahad promises. "Nor the twins. They're ours, all of us. And I'm betting they'll find themselves with siblings soon."

Bors laughs, "fair enough for fair-eyed siblings."

Galahad rests the rake he has been using to chase the remains of last year’s leaf fall from the slowly expanding patch of bare earth by their cottage. he leans on it, looking directly at Bors. It is unusual for the man to speak this long - Galahad wonders if he simply feels overwhelmed. If he seeks the comfort of his brothers, of the familiar in something he has known longer than a year.

What's left of that is here, now, and Bors does not seem the type who is unable to adapt.

"Have you considered having a few of your own?"Bors asks suddenly, and for a long moment Galahad cannot track the meaning of the question. He casts back, along the line of the conversation.

"Siblings?" Galahad finds it nonsensical. He'd left two in Sarmatia, and had no way of knowing if they survived or if his parents might have had others in the interim.

Bors laughs heartily at his confusion. He wallops Galahad on the back then, hard enough to rattle his teeth. Galahad catches himself while Bors descends further into wheezing laughter, and he cannot make sense of the joke.

"No," Bors gasps at his knees, bent double with the force of his own mirth, "I meant _children_ , Galahad."

The statement strikes Galahad in an equally nonsensical way.

"He's ill-equipped for childbirth," a low voice interposes itself, Tristan pushing aside the curtain to let himself out of their hut. He is half-dressed in concession to the heat, though in this circumstance it seems almost provocative. A dare for Bors to challenge them again.

"There's blue women enough to do that for him," Bors laughs, refusing to be intimidated.

Galahad regards Bors blandly. "I might argue you've had share enough for all the knights."

"He's hoping to pawn the youngest off on you," Tristan suggests, leaning casually against the gate, though it blocks Bors' access to Galahad, invading his space until he has to move back from the fenced garden - and Galahad in it. 

Galahad wishes he could protest Tristan's rescue - though he supposes it is as much Tristan's private life Bors is prying into as his own. He did not have the whole rights to the conversation, but Galahad would have preferred to laugh Bors off than to draw further acute attention to the unusual arrangement he and Tristan share. He does not think Bors means it as strongly as others might.

Arguably, now that they are out of danger and grown too old for the arrangement of convenience, they should abandon it for convention. But they are not Romans - and never have been - to hold themselves to such conventions. Neither are they Sarmatian anymore, nor Picts. 

Galahad feels comfortable to arrange his place alongside Tristan's in this 'other' that they have become. It is where he has always felt the best fit, even if it is difficult and betimes, loose.

"There are enough children to care for," Galahad answers for himself, glancing at Tristan then. They have not spoken about such things, never discussed a future that now feels tenuous in Galahad's hold. 

"I suppose there are at that," Bors relents, with a glance at Tristan. "And babes are harder to train than hawks or horses."

"You've managed to train neither," Tristan observes mildly.

Bors laughs again, and the tension dissipates slightly. It is not so serious a topic, by Bors' intent. He has touched a nerve, unintended and unexpected. He does not poke into it further.  
-

The night air is heavy and sticky, pressing against Galahad's bared back and seeming to pressure his lungs from the inside out. His breaths feel wet, hot and brothy. He lays still and miserable on the pallet, sweating. Beside him, Tristan stirs, moving to yet another position to expose a new patch of skin to the hot, heavy air. 

"Are you sleeping?" Galahad murmurs, smearing his face against the pillow to remove some of the dripping sweat. 

"Not by any satisfactory definition," Tristan answers, muffled and miserable. 

Galahad chuckles, lifting one heavy feeling arm to settle it gently over Tristan's shoulders, easing his palm against wet, heated skin. He makes a comforting sweep down Tristan's bare back to his tailbone, and then lifts his hand away before he can contribute to the discomfort. 

"We could try the river?" Galahad suggests.

"Pick up enough of that plant to stop itching on your way back," Tristan mutters, making no effort to move a muscle.

Galahad thinks of the horse flies, mosquitoes, the swarms of tiny black gnats that wait for animals at the edges of the water. The river immediately seems less alluring. 

Tristan shifts. Galahad shifts. They both ease onto their backs, side by side. Between them, Galahad reaches out seeking Tristan's hand, curling their fingers loosely together.

His thoughts refuse to close down, the heat keeping him awake and promising not to relent. Thinking back along the day, Galahad settles again on the strange confrontation between Tristan and Bors earlier in the day. It's a subject Galahad hasn't ever considered - though Tristan's reaction was strangely protective.

"Tristan?" Galahad asks, wondering if the middle of the night is truly the right time - though they aren't doing anything otherwise. Besides _roasting_.

Tristan groans, but it isn't quite protest - just agony. Perhaps he does not want to think while he cooks.

"Did Bors really upset you today?" Galahad ponders, before he winces - it sounded like the sort of insecure questions asked by the young women he had once endured sharing his bed with.

Tristan makes a dismissive noise. "He was seeking a reaction."

Which reaction and to what purpose was unclear. It was the Pandora's box of question they should have discussed when it became clear it was likely to be permanent between them. It has - well, Galahad simply accepts that some things are irrelevant.

"And the reaction he got was -?" Galahad prompts.

He feels the motion of Tristan's head turning, his eyes landing on Galahad. He can sense the unusual weight of it, and he squeezes Tristan's fingers. 

"I only barely survived," Tristan answers at last. "It was you and the others who all had made plans."

He has a point. Galahad shifts, easing onto his side and reaching for Tristan. Despite the heat, the contact is welcome.

"Did you ever want a family?" Galahad asks, and Tristan growls playfully at the pressing question. The pallet shifts and surges beneath Galahad as Tristan seizes him and presses him down into it.

"Are you asking to make one?" Tristan's hot breath paints over Galahad's sweaty chest. He leans down to kiss Galahad, insisting, "I have a family."

They stay together for as long as they can bear it, touching and kissing until the touches linger too heavy, too oily against the skin.

Then Tristan gets up, hoisting his weight reluctantly off the bed. Galahad hears water splash in the ewer, and then a cool, sopping cloth settles on his chest, bringing immediate relief. Tristan wets his chest, his belly, his forehead with gentle touches that leave the areas wet and cool with evaporation. Galahad sighs with pleasure and supposes this was always the only answer he needed.

Perhaps his family is tense and cautious, ever on the verge of flight - restless at times, like a tied animal. It is _his_ however, and Tristan consider it something they share.

Still, Tristan settles on the pallet beside him, and with both of them damp and cooling, sleep presses quickly for its one, short chance.

"The hawks will fly soon," Tristan murmurs, but his fingers find Galahad's and hold. 

-

Galahad is re-planting the potatoes he had pulled with the weeds, scrawny things not yet big enough to consider food, when the shadow passes over his head. Wings reach black across the ground and then vanish into the shadow of the woods. He looks up just in time to see the second hatchling soar overhead and join its sibling on one of the branches overhead, shaking its tail dismissively.

Galahad sits up, resting his dirty hands in his lap. He takes a deep breath of the late summer air and watches the young hawks study the distance they've come before taking up the call for their mother to come and feed them.

"You couldn't have waited another week?' Galahad asks, rhetorically. 

The birds don't concern themselves with his troubles. He supposes they have their own. Like empty bellies.

Galahad sighs out then breathes in. Conseca appears to feed the babies. He plants the last of his accidental culls back in some semblance of a straight line, gathers the ones he's pretty sure are weeds, and disposes of them with the browning pile of others.

For such an eventful day, it feels like any other. Galahad dusts his hands, waves sweat-sipping gnats away, and wonders what to do about it. It may be pre-emptive, but the threat is the same. When the hawks go, so will Tristan.

-

For a week they stay close to the nest and Galahad holds out hope. Perhaps they will stay where it is easy to hunt and scavenge. Perhaps they will find a loyalty to one of the tribe as Conseca had given herself over to Tristan. 

He hopes harder still when he comes out into the warm evening air and watches the way Tristan straightens himself to watch them wheeling overhead. He says nothing as they fly above, but his eyes are dark and envious. 

"Don't hawks usually raise their young together?" Galahad asks.

"Perhaps her mate was similar in demeanor to Bors," Tristan answers, distantly amused.

"Then she was wise to shed the extra weight," Galahad answers. It relaxes him a little. Perhaps this time, he won't go. Perhaps Tristan has learned to stay.

Tristan whistles up to Conseca then, and holds his arm up. She only wheels once before she eases into a descent and drops into her place on his forearm, letting him push his fingers through her head feathers.

She tilts one keen, cold eye in Galahad's direction daring him to risk his fingers. Galahad does not. 

"When can we clean the nest out of our chimney?" Galahad asks.

"Give it another day or two," Tristan suggests. "It's not as if we need a fire."

Galahad concedes the point.

Within two days, the hatchlings are gone, wings spread and soaring. Galahad hopes they are not like ducks - that they won't return year after year to hatch their young in Pictish chimneys. 

He does not remember the last awakening fondly. So he steadies the ladder while Tristan shovels down handfuls of filthy straw and sticks, bits of rags and string. Old, bloody feathers from past meals cling in places, and at the bottom he thinks he sees some of Tristan's hair woven in.

"You raised a demon magpie," Galahad observes. He finds he is not surprised.

"She has no interest when she's not nesting," Tristan answers the accusation levelly. "And there's no reason for her not to take and use what she finds useful."

Galahad thinks such an attitude is comfortingly familiar. He had never seen Tristan pass over something that took his fancy. The rest of the chimney needs further attention - spattered white with bird excrement. 

"Vinegar," Tristan observes, before he plunges his arm down the chimney to knock anything lodged in it loose. "And heat."

Well, at least the latter is easy to provide - they can use the chimney as intended - and perhaps finally make use of the oven again. 

The ladder shakes as Tristan descends it, and Galahad steadies it until he's safely on the he ground, filthy and smudged with soot. They will have to brave the bugs.

Galahad finds a place to put his hands that isn't filthy. "Thank you for cleaning it up."

Tristan looks up the sky and no hawks circle overhead. Perhaps Conseca is only making sure her youngsters have found good places to survive or stretching her wings for herself again.

Galahad wonders if it will seem like so short a time when Arthur's boys have grown big enough to fly. It seems like far too vast a concept of time to consider.

Tristan sneezes by way of answer, and Galahad chuckles. He cannot think of anything to say that won't add to the weight of settlement and domesticity. Even he can feel it, now, a strange urge to be on the march again. He takes Tristan's hand instead, dragging him to the stream where they can wash its heaviness off their skin.

They are lucky to find the water free of children, if not the attendant bugs. They strip and hurl themselves in by mutual agreement, each wanting to leave skin bare as little time as possible. Galahad is scrubbing hard, yellow soap against his scalp with his eyes closed when Tristan's arms settle around his middle, pulling him back against Tristan's chest. Galahad relaxes in the instant before sharp teeth close on his shoulder, startling a gasp from him.

"Don't open your eyes," Tristan murmurs against the forming bruise, near enough for Galahad to hear. "You'll get soap in them." 

Tristan's hands spread over Galahad's belly and wide until they reach his hips, pulling them back against Tristan's own. When Tristan's hand curls around his cock, Galahad instinctively grabs for his wrists. One hand closes soap-slicked at Tristan's forearm, the other - instinctively holding on - jams the bar of hard soap against Tristan's wrist bones.

Tristan hisses and it dissolves into a chuckle. The reverberation through his his grip on Galahad's cock makes them both go still - a worse miss and he really would have regretted it.

"I already washed my hands," Tristan purrs. Galahad makes a blind throw for the shore while Tristan makes small motions with his fingers under the head of his hardening cock. He hears a splash, another chuckle, and decides he doesn't care if the soap washes away with the current.

He can feel Tristan's shifting arm muscles, how he supports Galahad's weight and the coaxing warmth of his grip beneath the surface of the water. He grows hard only slowly - the cold water making his blood slow to heat. Tristan's breath is warm against the back of his neck, his own pooling on his chest with his chin dropped. The sensation feels as if Tristan is breathing _through_ him, and he matches the pace of their breaths. Warmth grows in his core, pulled outward by Tristan's long, slow strokes. Soap slides down his neck, hesitates maddeningly on his forehead to keep his eyes screwed shut tightly. 

Release builds. Tension winds. He rides at the edge of both, held back by the cool water, by the touch of soap on his skin sliding closer to his eyes in tiny increments. Finally, gasping, Tristan's pace fast enough to move ripples of water below the surface and down his thighs, Galahad tips his head back against Tristan's shoulder.

"Come on," Tristan coaxes, and Galahad growls. He's so close it _hurts_ , should be over by now, but his consciousness refuses to surrender, awareness can't subsume beneath instinct and let him succumb. There is too much other sensation, and it leaves him clawing Tristan's wrists and begging senselessly - 

"-please, please, _please_!"

-without knowing if he's asking for Tristan to stop or to force him past the tantalizing edge. He crawls up his spine, over his shoulders, prickles his scalp with cold, electric feeling sweat.

Trembling tears down his thighs in waves, threatening to take him off his feet, trying to curl his body in as if all of his muscles and sinews are being reeled in before the storm. 

Galahad feels the exact moment - a sharpening of clarity that lets him gasp a warning that sounds suspiciously like one last 'please' - and then everything tumbles together in a rush. He holds onto Tristan, Tristan holds onto him, but both slip down in the water.

Galahad leans back against Tristan and lets him support the weight, feeling like all of his muscles are slack rope. The lazy current of frigid water pulls him back faster than he'd like, but for a time he drifts between warm and cool, secure and lost. He doesn't mind, so long as Tristan is right there, warm and solid.

A sudden pinch at his neck sends Galahad straight up, slapping for whatever stinging insect had bitten him, impacting Tristan with both motions until he surrenders his hold on Galahad so they can swim back to shore and save themselves from further bites.

-


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galahad half-rouses, sore and satisfied in the earliest hours of morning. Tristan touches his face gently, soothing his hair back away from his eyes. The blankets lift and then resettle over him. A soft brush of warm air against his forehead, and then the press of Tristan's mouth. Reassured, he slips back into easy sleep, stretched leisurely with the warmth of two still beneath the blankets.

Galahad half-rouses, sore and satisfied in the earliest hours of morning. Tristan touches his face gently, soothing his hair back away from his eyes. The blankets lift and then resettle over him. A soft brush of warm air against his forehead, and then the press of Tristan's mouth. Reassured, he slips back into easy sleep, stretched leisurely with the warmth of two still beneath the blankets.

When he wakes later the heat is unbearable, dragging him sweaty from half-formed dreams. He is alone. The knowledge passes over and through him, numbing. Galahad gets up and washes in the ewer, then goes on with his morning. He draws water and grain for his horse, finding her alone in the paddock she shares with Tristan's matched gray. He has not ridden in some time and she looks good for the rest; fat and sleek and eager to see him carrying the grain bucket instead of the saddle. 

She plunges her nose into the grain eagerly and Galahad laughs, reduced to a convenient stand. She chews placidly, watching him with a warm brown eye. When he leads with the bucket, she extends her neck out to keep her nose in it as she reluctantly follows.

"You're lucky I don't have the same wanderlust," he tells her, hanging the bucket beneath the shady lean-to they had constructed for the horses. "Your companion is still expected to work for his meals."

She eyes him skeptically, waiting for him to fill the hay net. Feeling well trained, Galahad obliges her. At least he knows what _she_ expects from him. Galahad isn't sure if he should try following Tristan, or if he's expected to stay - they cannot both abandon the farm work and believe it will thrive in their absence.

Vinegar, he thinks, looking back up at the clay chimney, and perhaps some way to discourage birds from nesting. It is an easier problem to consider than his own wayward mate. He gathers a handful of fletched arrow shafts to offer in trade for the vinegar he knows one of the women carefully cultures, thinking it would be good to keep their own supply. 

"Galahad?" the voice reaches him through the curtain, and he leans out to find Gawain waiting politely. He smiles.

"Gawain, good morning," Galahad answers.

The other knight looks at him with clear concern, and Galahad is not surprised by how quickly the news of Tristan's departure has passed.

"I saw Tristan ride out this morning," Gawain explains, displaying the jug of wine he has brought to soothe and bolster Galahad's spirits.

The offer is welcome. Galahad returns the arrows to their place. 

"Thank you," he says, gesturing Gawain to lead the way. They head out past the fields where the Picts graze their animals and up to the ring of standing stones. They find a comfortable place in the shaded grass at the base of a stone and press their back to it, ready to drink their troubles away in private.

"What's he gone seeking?" Gawain asks, passing the jug. The wine inside is sweet and red, but young. The Picts are yet inexperienced at the craft, though they make a potent beer that had taken even Tristan off-guard into drunkenness.

"Reassurance that his wings still work should he need them to," Galahad muses aloud. "I catch him often at archery and swordplay."

Gawain arches his eyebrows and drinks when Galahad passes the bottle back, considering the information. "Of all of us, Tristan never dreamed past the coming dawn."

"It's in his soul," Galahad agrees. "He never expected to survive his service."

He has seen as much in Tristan's eyes on days when he looked at his damaged armor, at the scars on his own skin that pulled so tight at him. At times he wonders if survival is not the heaviest burden the gods have given Tristan.

"And what's in _your_ soul, Galahad?" Gawain asks, while Galahad drinks until his mind gets fuzzy and his limbs feel loose and light.

"Cleaning the chimney. Tending to our garden. Scraping enough to survive the winter from what sad plants have survived our handling," Galahad admits, hardly lofty goals. None of it is as true as the answer he gives afterward, "Tristan."

Gawain does not judge his foolishness. They trade sips from the jug. Above them, the sky is blue and beautiful and Galahad wishes it would turn gray, would reflect his mood rather than lifting it.

"Well," Gawain says. "We all know Tristan. He may wander, but even Arthur always trusted him to return. There's no argument about his loyalty."

"No," Galahad agrees, sighing. "But he returns when he likes and leaves me always to guess when he might have finally found himself in trouble out there."

Gawain favors him with a look that suggests he is being a mother hen. Galahad drinks again, and admits it feels good to at least voice his worries, even if they would not be understood.

Galahad has seen Tristan struggle with his bow, has seen how much he resents his own weakness. He has seen Tristan stiff and tired, surrendering to inertia at the end of the day. Admittedly, he has also seen him push on through pain to finish his work in the the garden or to groom his horse to gleaming.

"We _are_ 'what's out there' now, Galahad," Gawain reminds. "The rest, Tristan is wise enough to handle or avoid - and if something dangerous is out there, I'd rather have the warning."

Galahad wishes the sense was as reassuring for him as it must be for the other knights. They found it easy to believe Tristan would be back. His worry won't ease back that quickly, though he knows it to be useless. Worry or no, he can't keep Tristan tied.

"I haven't given up on him," Galahad agrees, "but sometimes I think, without meaning to, of his body on that battlefield. Cold and still."

Sometimes he does not believe he would have marched on this far, if he had found Tristan's heart still as the rest of him. Fate is as it is, however, and it had restored Tristan and changed only Galahad.

"We have lived with only loss," Gawain observes, "and it has not yet been even a year since we last knew it."

Gawain seems surprised to count back, to realize that it is only the first summer now fading to fall amongst their old enemies. Galahad chuckles at his amazed expression. It seems both longer and shorter. 

"We have a lot to learn," Galahad takes his point, and a last sip of wine. He passes the jug back to Gawain, appreciative of the gesture and company. "Thank you."

Gawain smiles warmly, and does not join Galahad on the way back to the village, sitting content in the grass with his back against the stone. He does not look so small as he might.

-

Galahad sits carefully over the central brace of the peaked roof of the hut and scrubs at spreading white pasty smears while the scent of vinegar threatens to make his eyes water. The clay is warm to the touch but not so hot as to burn his skin. He's filled the belly of the stove with hot coals to help purge the chimney of the remains of Conseca's nest and child rearing. He has not seen so much as a tail-feather of the offending parties since before Tristan had gone - only three days past.

He just works the stiffened fur bristles over the caked mess until the red clay shows through again, working inch by inch. Galahad knows it hardly needs to be as clean as he makes it, but the repetitive task is not unwelcome. It is a focus for his mind when the world - the village and the hunting grounds around it - feels small, even to Galahad. Strange that the solution for such madness was to make it smaller still. The brush, the clay, the shit covering it and the vinegar smell.

A sound - a shrill whistle - catches his attention and draws him out of his small world. He leans over very cautiously to see Guinevere holding Harviu on one hip and waving a cloth at him to catch his attention.

"Galahad," she says, showing her teeth in her fierce smile. "Shall I let the clay-wives know to build you another stove if you're going to scrub a hole in yours?'

He answers her smile with one he does not completely feel. "I am only cleaning it."

"You should cover your mouth and nose," Guinevere warns. "Rather than breathe that _dust_."

Galahad realizes he is covered in it: his clothes, arms, and face. Revulsion overtakes him a the slimy melange, smelling earthy and of vinegar and filth. He wrinkles his nose and catches the rag when Guinevere tosses it. It is soaked thoughtfully in something sweet smelling and floral to ward off the scent of his cleaning. He ties it over his face gratefully.

"Arthur only noticed Tristan missing last evening," she says, bouncing the child on her hip gently Harviu is the quieter of the pair - less babble, more content to stay close to his parents. Galahad finds it strange to see so much personality in such small creatures. He had seen Bors' children grow only in fits and starts, in the space they found for 'home' leave between skirmishes and patrols, between burial and celebration.

"Well," Galahad allows, without any malice, "Arthur has better things to mind - the comings and goings in his own household are certainly enough to keep his thoughts occupied. 

Guinevere laughs, and Galahad notices how much more often she seems to do it of late. He still would not want to cross swords with her in earnest, but she is happier in peace, happy to have her children and a man to love them, who can see her as equal.

Rome had sent him too far, Galahad realizes, to ever get him back a Roman.

"And you?" he asks. "I suppose you noticed the instant he was gone?"

"One needs only look at the moon to know how far the sun has gone," she says. "Not the instant, Galahad, only you can sense that. But shortly after."

"Is it like that?" he asks, scrubbing again. "The moon ever chasing the sun in his golden chariot and yet too blinded in her dimness by brilliance to ever catch up?"

Guinevere doesn't answer, and when he finishes his task, she is gone, leaving him to climb down slowly, carefully, and find a way to clean himself of filth.

The chimney nearly gleams, however, uniform red clay capped now with a strange box and screened with netting to keep birds away.

-

On the seventh day, Galahad sits at his small table, contemplating the empty seat across it while he carefully splits saved hawk feathers - one thing Conseca and her young had dropped in plentitude as if in payment for the inconvenience of their lodging. He sections the feathers neatly, carefully into fletching. He discards ragged ends, any sections that are too caked together or mangled.

Only idly he considers how much of his life has come to revolve around birds of late, though even the largest in his life has flown. A pile of identically sized fletches lie on the table, a dozen perfectly straight arrow shafts. He is glad he learned this trade enough to be exacting, to know how to find the right weight and length to make an arrow fly true.

He has learned to compensate for the stone arrowheads the Picts use - lighter, more delicate, and requiring a new method for balance. There were no smiths among this tribe - their few horses went unshod. They traded for their knives and swords or knapped flint for a sharp edge in a pinch. Crude but effective. Self-sufficient. 

The curtain rattles and a breeze stirs the still, hot air inside the hut. Stifling, he realizes, when it touches the sweat on the back of Galahad's neck. He takes a deep breath and leans back, a hollow tapping coming from somewhere outside, not quite rhythmic.

Suddenly he is aware of another presence, just behind him. A motion at the corner of his eye and then his work scatters under an onslaught of meager vegetables - unimpressive potatoes, a pair of thin, twisting carrots. Surprise jolts him out of his chair to face -

Tristan, with a basket held against his hip - now empty - and a proud smile on his face. Galahad immediately forgets his ire.

"We've done it," Tristan says proudly, as if the potatoes were more than a half dozen or bigger than his thumb. 

Galahad swings his arms up around Tristan's neck and pulls him down, pulls him close and laughs. "Did we _plant_ carrots?"

"We are such good farmers they grew anyway," Tristan suggests, setting the basket aside as if surprised by the intensity of Galahad's welcome. His arms settle around Galahad's middle and Galahad ignores the late summer sticky sweat that wets their shirts between them.

"You put something clever on the chimney," Tristan observes, running a soothing, dirt stained hand down Galahad's back. The strange hammering picks up again. "Conseca doesn't like it."

Realizing the sound is a determined bird beak hammering on the new wooden baffle over the chimney, Galahad laughs.

"I thought it better than suffocating in my sleep."

He draws back, gathering scattered potatoes and fletching, mostly undamaged after being assaulted with vegetables. He doesn't ask why and where Tristan had gone. Tristan makes an affirmative noise, refusing to let go of all contact with Galahad.

"You're back sooner than I expected." This statement, Galahad cannot stop. 

"I didn't want to miss the harvest."

Galahad snorts his disbelief, but reads the real meaning beneath the words - he had missed _Galahad_ , if not maybe the stationary life of gardeners.

"I suppose - with four or five other ingredients - we could make our very own supper," Galahad allows. 

"Have you not hunted any more goats?" Tristan teases. Galahad jabs him in the uninjured side of his belly. 

" _You've_ spent a sevenday out there in the wild, and all you captured were potatoes from our own garden."

"And carrots," Tristan reminds, unflinching. 

-

The year wears on and the heat breaks suddenly overnight, a cold rain pouring down over the village that the temperature never recovers from. The weather turns cold, the blankets are put to use, and Galahad is glad on these nights when he does not wake shivering and alone, instead finding warm skin to shove his hands against, another body to lean into. The fire warms the small space of their hut, one room and crowded now. The real harvest has come, and it means a need for baskets and nets, for a way to store what they have managed to make for themselves, like animals burying food.

It is too busy, for a time, to worry. Then, their garden has yielded what little it will give, and they assist the others. There is a rhythm to it, an old lullaby that Galahad feels in his bones when he works in a line with children and old women both, harvesting wheat.

Somewhere, Bors' wife hums absently, until Galahad realizes she is singing of home - not, now, with longing, but with the wistful fondness of _being_ there. She is humming with contentedness. 

He feels it settle strangely on his own shoulders, too, a blanket of melody, and the work goes faster for it. It is not so different hewing wheat with a sickle as hewing men with his sword. It is calmer, but his muscles remember the motion, his body warms into it like sword practice, and he steps over the fallen fronds to fight the next group.

These enemies go on and on , and he's glad to see it, hoping it is enough for bread to go around in the coldest parts of winter.

The sound of trotting hooves and jingling tack makes Galahad look up at last. The knights had kept their horses, but they have found their need to ride greatly reduced - now the horses ferry barefoot children, having earned as much peace as their riders.

Only Tristan rides regularly. Galahad sees his tall figure passing the wheat field astride his gray and spares a prayer that he will not stay away until the snows. His dark eyes are scanning the workers, his long bangs loose and shading them. Galahad smiles - it is a familiar image, even if Tristan has cast off his armor and left it, riding only in leathers and furs - in allowance for how quickly the weather is cooling.

Galahad lifts his hand to wave goodbye, and then notices Tristan is leading his own horse - saddled and bridled.

"Galahad!" Tristan calls, beckoning him with a sweep of his arm.

Lightness fills Galahad, welcome, and he hands off his sickle. He does not need to know where they are going - he is going together with Tristan. Tristan tosses him his reins and Galahad hoists himself up onto his mare's back and stretches himself out into the seat, remembering his posture. 

"I had to let out her girth," Tristan says, as Galahad observes that her back feels perhaps a little broader. "She needs more exercise."

Galahad laughs, noting that Tristan's saddle and his own have both been fitted with large rucksacks slung as saddle bags, currently empty. He supposes that she will get exercise, whether or not she truly needs it. He follows Tristan's lead, sweat cooling between his shoulder blades from his work.

"Where are we going?" Galahad asks, since Tristan does not seem to be delaying in getting there, turning south from the village and riding out with no further stops.

Tristan pats the bags slung over his horse's rump. "We left an apple orchard unburned at the wall. Since Rome has abandoned it, we should find it full of ripe apples."

Galahad laughs. It is a small and tame adventure for men who had marched from Sarmatia to Rome, and then to the very end of her territory to the Wall herself. The apples, at least, would be welcome.

"So far to please your belly," Galahad observes, teasing, but Tristan takes no notice.

It feels good to be riding with him, to put down the worry of being left behind for a few days. He hopes Tristan has packed blankets enough. If not, Galahad will warm his coldest extremities against Tristan's skin as they huddle beneath saddle blankets.

"Arthur sent me," Tristan says after a moment. "He wants apples, sure, but also seeds."

"An important mission," Galahad says, in good spirits. Or perhaps, one of mercy, intended to ease Tristan's wanderlust with something Galahad could join him at. Wise, if it was truly that calculated. 

"For my belly," Tristan says, kicking his horse to a trot so Galahad must race after to keep up.

He takes them wide past the mountains where they had lost Dagonet but not through them, not now with no Saxons to threaten, and water still flowing through the mountain pass. Galahad wonders if corpses had flowed with the river when it came back to life again in the spring - perhaps frozen so long they looked fresh. 

What a mess war made of the world. He lets go of the thoughts and just follows the flying tail of Tristan's horse over the flat plains, ever south and incautious. Free, as if Tristan has forgotten all of his fears.

Galahad allows that perhaps Tristan has always had fewer worries. That night they build camp on open grassland under the stars. The world stretches out around them and their small fire, and Galahad forgives the chill, leaning against Tristan.

"Will you go again?" Galahad asks, unable to stop himself.

Tristan is silent for a long time, looking up at the cold, black sky. The moon hangs there, the stars. Pictures moving away across time at the whim of the gods. Galahad looks up to the seven sisters - he is told there are seven, but they seem to pair and glow together and he has only ever made four separate for his eyes.

Tristan can see all of them, it had been one of the first tests for his sharp eyes. Galahad wonders how much more of the world Tristan sees with such sharp eyes and keen insight, wonders if that clarity of vision causes him to forget the distance between himself and what he reaches for.

"Yes," Tristan says at last. To say otherwise would be a lie. "Will it bother you?"

"Yes," Galahad breathes, the air fogging from his mouth afterward into the cool night. To say otherwise would be a lie.

Tristan doesn't apologize or make false promises not to go. He reaches out instead and lifts the blanket from around Galahad's shoulders to drape it over both of them instead. He is here, without reserve or wandering mind, _now_. Galahad does him the courtesy of setting his own worries aside also.

"Will you say goodbye before you go?" Galahad asks.

"Will that make it easier?"

Galahad thinks of his most recent disappearance, of Tristan tucking him in, leaning over to leave a warm kiss on Galahad's forehead, and how it had left him peaceful. He nods. Tristan accepts the answer. 

It will not make the wait wholly bearable or stop the slow build of pressure between them. It will not ease the sensation of chains around Tristan's ankles when he is still for too long, but Galahad thinks it might be enough for things to work between them. He wants nothing else.

After a moment, Tristan yawns, and Galahad catches the bug, jaw stretching wide around his own yawn.

-

The fields surrounding the wall have grown over in tall grass, recovered from their burning but not entirely from the warfare. The seasons and the crows have stripped the Saxon bodies to bony corpses, though not yet skeletons. Leathery limbs lurk beneath the grasses, out-flung, and threaten to foul the footing of their mounts.

It has become quiet here, a grave. Tristan leads the way carefully, picking through the fields. They take their course from the ancient tree at the gates. There is a corpse at the bottom that animals have ravaged, and Tristan's arrow still protruding from its chest. Tristan shows his snarl to the traitor as they ride past.

The orchard is behind the wall, and the great doors now stand open, left wide. There is no one left to guard them - what Romans had once settled the outpost have now scattered. 

Galahad isn't sure what he expected to find on their return - perhaps desolation, perhaps a complete recovery to pastoral overgrowth. Seeing it between is strange, but feels right. They do not stop at the graveyard - Galahad can see the swords standing upright, rusted, ingrown.

Lancelot's blade has a rose bush grown winding around the hilt, thorns, and the leaves brown with the late fall cool. He wonder what colors the blooms are, wonders who planted it, and then they move past it. 

"Is this the first time you've come back?" Galahad asks, as Tristan guides them through the ghost of a town. Nothing of value has been left, it is as empty of signs of occupation as it is of actual occupants.

"The second," Tristan says, and then goes quiet, looking ahead. 

A big, dark shape moves in the shadows beneath the apple trees, slowly. Galahad watches it shift and move, like a shadow come alive.

"Is that Lancelot's-?" Galahad asks. The dark head lifts at the sound of his voice, and the horse eyes them warily, ears swiveling. Galahad's mare whinnies shrilly - in recognition or warning, and then the darker animal moves off through the trees, in no particular rush. 

"Yes," Tristan says, swinging down from his gray. "Loose and lonely, though we turned Dagonet's old gelding free as well."

There's no sign of any other animals. The Saxons had come on foot and the knights had taken their mounts with them. Perhaps the other horse has moved on. 

They pull the saddles off their horses, trusting them not to wander far with so much fresh grazing, so many fallen apples, and carry their sacks to the orchard.

The trees are heavy and full with unpicked apples, and Galahad finds the sight almost sad. Children had always picked them bare as quickly as they bore ripe fruit in the past. Even Galahad has fond memories of climbing into the tops of the trees to get what apples the others could not reach, fetching them back for Tristan.

Now the trees look wild, and the apples seem a burden to them, dropped carelessly to the ground for drunken wasps.

"You go up," Tristan says once they have divested the lowest branches of the best fruit. Galahad can pass over bruised items, with the luxury of pickiness. "I'll catch what you drop."

"I could catch them too, you know," Galahad argues, seeing his half of the task as the harder one.

Tristan smiles, smug, and his mouth makes a catlike shape around his teeth to retort; "not as well as I can."

Galahad tucks an apple - he has not resisted eating some few - between his teeth to free his hands for climbing. Then, for throwing apples at Tristan. Quickly, they are both laughing - Galahad throws nothing that Tristan cannot catch, but he does not hold back his arm or throw soft underhand to his mate.

He manages by throwing three in rapid succession to occupy both hands, the third impacting against Tristan's chest instead, a victory. Tristan does not seem impressed.

"I aimed for the middle," Galahad informs, leaning down through the boughs so Tristan can see his smile.

Instead, Tristan seizes handfuls of his tunic and wrests him from the tree, down into the overgrown grass, a contest of limbs and strength, of who was the least willing to find their backs pushed into soggy, rotten apples - and in this, Galahad wins. He springs up the cleaner, and therefore, to his mind, he is the victor. 

He offers Tristan a hand up anyway, hauling him to his feet and helping him carry the sacks back to the long empty barracks. Tristan's back and buttox are smeared with the mashed remains of their rolling, and Galahad laughs, gathering their cargo to carry back with them.  
-


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They carry the apples back and save the seeds, keeping them careful with the intent to start an orchard here, somewhere closer. They will still need to return to the mile fort for the next few years, until what they plant can bear fruit. It seems strange to Galahad to think so far ahead, and not take into account that there would be orders to follow. His future is his own, and he is building it here.
> 
> With apple seeds.

They carry the apples back and save the seeds, keeping them careful with the intent to start an orchard here, somewhere closer. They will still need to return to the mile fort for the next few years, until what they plant can bear fruit. It seems strange to Galahad to think so far ahead, and not take into account that there would be orders to follow. His future is his own, and he is building it here.

With apple seeds.

Galahad keeps them in a jar, painted with a tall twisting tree in the Pictish style and runes that Galahad is learning, slowly, to read. These mean 'reach' or 'grow'. A prayer that he hopes will affect the seed through proximity and duration. Galahad fletches arrows as the winter grows colder, to keep his hands occupied and to ready himself for the coldest months when they will have to hunt for their suppers. This winter, Galahad _will_ prove he is not a burden, not a child.

When the snows come, heavy and cold, the children build snow soldiers, hold rolling snowball fights that last entire days and catch many unawares in the crossfire. Galahad watches the twins, tiny breaths fogging out of their mouths in excited puffs, tiny trails of white smoke, tentative at first in the foreign cold. They sink in to their ankles, and plunge chubby, grabbing hands into the white mass, babbling and giggling when it vanishes. Magic, to their young minds. They will not remember this first brush with snow, but Galahad remembers his. In the woods, the coldest he had ever experienced, wishing for his home, for his mother, for the warmth of Sarmatia.

He had huddled into a blanket, miserable, angry. His fingers had slowly gone numb. It had not been magical, for him, it had seemed the end of the world. Then, a body had eased down next to him in camp, a quiet presence to lean shoulder to shoulder with him and face the cold by sharing warmth.

They had been content to share warmth since, to sit the darkest hours together against the cold.

Most of them. All but the ones where Tristan went wandering. Those, Galahad realizes, are never the darkest - they only seem that way without Tristan. 

He doesn't go with the first snow, staying warm in bed to pull their bodies together in the deep of night.

"I don't miss the summer heat," Tristan whispers against Galahad's ear, low.

He means they can stay close in the cold and make their own. He paints hot breath against Galahad's ear in the silence of the snow-muffled night. He only realizes when Tristan curls his hand around Galahad's cock that this is a goodbye.

-

He wakes in the cold, but the hut is held warm by the coals in the fireplace. The ghost of arms around him fades slowly from his dreams and Galahad drags himself from bed only reluctantly. Tristan is gone, two weeks now, and the snows have come behind to blanket the village and the woods. The world is quiet, the birds gone south or abandoning song, animals run to ground for winter.

Today Galahad is hunting. The deer are wandering now, hungry and seeking. It means they will be easier to find.

In the quiet spaces of the long dark, before the sun thinks of waking, Galahad realizes why Bors had pressured him to start a family - _suggested_ , Galahad corrects himself. To give Galahad something solid and stable to wake to, some feeling of growth in the long dark of winter.

He digs a hard apple out of the basket and eats it, considering how different his life could be. Perhaps, full here, and warm. A woman in his bed, a baby in his arms. Even this fantasy does not stir a desire in him. He does not _want_ it, not without Tristan.

Briefly, as he pulls on his tunic, he allows the selfish thought that he might have both, that a family might in some way, satisfy Tristan - or perhaps clip his wings to smaller wanderings.

_No,_ it would drive him away. Maybe not immediately, but the weight would crush him slowly. Galahad _has_ his family, and they say goodbye to him before they go now. He pulls his tunic straight and pulls a heavy wool cloak over it, exhaling steam even in the heated interior of the hut. He gathers up his bow, slings on his quiver over his shoulder, and steps out into the morning.

The other hunters are gathering, not grim faced but sharing stories, remembering old hunts in past winters. Guinevere is among them, eager to lead the party. She looks slim and young again, wrapped in furs and confident, carrying her bow.

"Galahad," she smiles, her face painted in blue lines - the symbols for luck and prosperity traced onto her cheeks, not the ones for war. She reaches up as he approaches, and passes her first two fingers over his cheeks, one straight line over his nose and beneath his eyes, then two marks on his forehead. It is the first time he has been decorated.

"I haven't-" Galahad starts, and she presses blue-stained fingers over his mouth to silence him. He tastes woad paint, and knows the mark is meant to hold him silent. 

He takes the instruction, knowing that not to speak means he should spread his thoughts instead, focus and learn without distracting himself with questions.

"We do not rest until we find the deer," Guinevere says, "we do not return unburdened."

She turns her expression fiercely toward each of the assembled hunters and Galahad realizes he stands in a line with five youths - youngsters on the verge of becoming adults.

He tries not to feel it as a bitterness, holds in his sharp bark of laughter, but he cannot control the fierce twist of his mouth. It is humiliating to be counted in this coming of age with children he might have fathered, if he had not been a soldier. He turns into the woods, angry, clutching his bow so tightly his knuckles ache.

" _Unburdened_ ," Galahad hisses, crawling over a deadfall. He speaks to no one but himself and the frozen winter air. "As if I have not carried _enough_."

He has carried dead brothers and living ones. He has carried Tristan from the edge of death back to this world. He has carried _himself_.

How could she say, because he has not brought them a deer carcass, that he has ever been unburdened? The weight is on him even now. He drags it through the brush behind himself, a weight as heavy as a man made of stone.

-

Galahad crashes through the undergrowth until he remembers his purpose. He is hunting, not sulking, and he has not so much as looked for a sign of the animals. 

He stops to gather breath, breathing in stinging cold air, and looks down at the ground for any sign of deer. He is not that lucky. A deep breath, gathering himself, and crouches lower to look at the world as an animal might. He follows his instincts, until broken branches catch his attention off one side of a thicket. He finds a deer track, the signs of delicate hoof prints in the snow. A small number, traveling together.

Galahad strings his bow and becomes a hunter, letting his thoughts fade back and going on feeling instead, waiting for the signs of fresh passage before he crouches low, focusing on keeping silent. Slow. Eyes open. 

The last time he had hunted alone here, past the river, he had seen a white stag, a ghost in the darkness. Perhaps he had never seen it at all- certainly there has been no sign since and he had been half-mad with smoke sickness.

He finds the herd, wary and grazing, ears rotating as they risk themselves - dark coats, white snow - for the few thin bites of food they can scavenge.

They move slowly, necks made long to push the snow aside and find the brown grass beneath. Galahad draws his bowstring taut, pulling in his breath and holding it as he aims the arrow just behind the front leg of the youngest buck, drawing in his focus. His fingers are tense on the string, heartbeat slow and mind quiet. He is sure, when he lets the arrow fly. The string stings his cheek when it snaps straight again. The arrow springs forward, a bird to flight.

There is an instant where the deer startle, the arrow strikes true, and the buck leaps straight up in a wild, flailing panic that lasts only four twisting, bucking steps before dropping straight down. The other deer scatter in all directions, leaving Galahad numb and uncertain. What he had expected, he is unsure, but not the sudden explosion of motion, not the leap higher than he stands followed by sudden, complete, stillness.

He has seen hunters make strikes before, but to feel the reverberations in his fingers as the animal lays still, stretched in the snow as if for one last leap. There is very little blood. Galahad approaches slowly, feeling a strange electric current in his blood. It is a sensation he hasn't experienced before, and he feels uncertainty in its wake. He has killed men - many. He has seen horses die, has dressed animals to make them ready to eat, but he has never been here before.

Galahad crouches down over the carcass, easing his fingers into the warm fur. Now he thinks, only _now_ somehow, some way he can't identify, he is a man. He laughs, and it is a bitter sound in the empty space around him.

-

There is nothing unusual about the hide Galahad stretches for leather, no errant marks, nothing but uniform deer brown and white. Still he finds himself running his fingers through the fur, finding that a simple color is made up of rings and bands, lighter toward the body and darker toward the air. Brown in variating shades. He had returned to the village first of all the young hunters, dropping the deer not at Guinevere's feet - he is not proving himself to _her_ , but in his own empty garden plot. He assembles a deer stand, finishes the work he had begun in the woods of dressing and cutting, skinning and sectioning.

As knights, they had never been wasteful. As Picts, it borders on reverence. He discards very little, sharing what he cannot consume immediately, preserving what he can, salting and drying the rest.

The hide, he keeps, having earned it. It would be better put to use as leather, but too it would wear out faster as a garment. Vainly, Galahad wants to be able to look at it when he needs to. When he feels homesick for an idea of home, for the strange reality of 'home' that had become his as a soldier, a wandering home dependant on people rather than location. He has both now, people and permanence, but at times he still feels a lack.

"You caught one," Arthur observes, coming unnoticed behind Galahad while he tightens the ropes on the frame to stretch the hide.

"Why did Guinevere never challenge _you_ to prove your manhood?" Galahad wonders, but there is good humor in the question. "I have never seen you haul any carcasses back from the woods, Arthur."

When he turns, his former commander is smiling, considering the question. Galahad fingers the clean hole in the deer hide where his arrow had pierced, the one flaw from cape to tail. There had been very little blood to wash out.

"There are other ways to prove manhood," Arthur says, "perhaps for you, this is the most appealing."

Galahad finds he is uninterested in what other options he has passed over. "I miss Tristan."

The confession pushes past his lips, hot air and sound, before Galahad can think to stop it. He adds quickly, "I do not _need_ him, but I miss him."

Arthur's merriment fades a little, and Galahad wonders exactly how he expects Arthur to do anything about it. He is no longer their commander, and while someday he will lead the Picts, for now he is only a husband, a father, a friend.

"Galahad," Arthur says, carefully, laying a hand on Galahad's shoulder. "Once, you told me I had lost one less knight than I thought. I had begun to mourn Tristan before he was dead."

Galahad remembers the long hours, the small space, and Tristan still and frail and small. He had watched for a long time and yet he is surprised by how quickly the image returns to his mind. Perhaps that is the source of it - Galahad, a part of him, still lives in that small room.

"Stop mourning him," Arthur says gently. "Stop mourning yourself. Tristan is ours, for what definition of such he allows himself, and yours for a greater definition still. No man - or woman - belongs to only one thing."

The last is a statement Arthur must know well. He was as many things as a man might be. More than labels and loyalties. Galahad, however, finds some strange hollow sound to the words - a cause for thought. 

It is late that night, dark and quiet, after a meal he had made and grown and killed, that Galahad understands the meaning of why, to him, the words seem a front. They ring hollow inside Galahad because most of the things he had assumed he would always belong to are gone. He is no longer a soldier, no longer a Roman nor a Sarmatian. 

What remains is that he belongs to - or with - Tristan, and perhaps devoting so much energy to that is what keeps him back from feeling he belongs to any of the things he has tried since, not gardening, not hunting, not living as a villager. 

Galahad closes his eyes as nothing, a list of ex experiences, and resolves to open them again as a Pict, a hunter, a farmer. To prove himself as Arthur had, by standing in the role and filling it.

-

"You've become a man," Tristan observes, turning the hide back to examine the quality of Galahad's work. He has found it on the bed, where Galahad saw it to fit perfectly, where he's found need of the warmth, though the winter has not yet reached the coldest point. 

Galahad finds he has stoked the fire, and a brace of rabbits have been laid out clean and ready for dinner. None of it pleases him so much as Tristan's return. His smile, no matter how windblown and wild the rest of him looks, is the same.

"Did you have any serious doubts?" Galahad asks, tying the heavy door flap closed behind himself. "I would have thought you already had proof enough."

"Mm," Tristan agrees, turning the hide back to flat on the bed, "but now _you_ have proof enough."

Galahad wraps his arms around Tristan, and the touch reciprocates, his dark eyes looking down into Galahad's as if seeking something. He has searched out trails, has spotted traps and ambushes with such an intent expression. He is solving some mystery of Galahad or seeking some new inroad to understanding. Whatever he sees pleases him, and he smiles slowly, lifting his hands to Galahad's face and touching softly. He leans down to kiss him, and Galahad lifts himself into it.

"You aren't saying goodbye again so soon are you?" Galahad asks against Tristan's mouth. 

Tristan shakes his head, brushing his thumbs against Galahad's cheeks. "I thought we might explore your newly earned manhood together?"

Galahad laughs, with Tristan real and solid in his arms, and the winter feeling warmer already.

[END.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Thus concludes our little revisit with this pair. I hope it was as satisfying for you guys as it was for me!  
> -Mucho thanks to my Beta reader, Quedarius (http://archiveofourown.org/users/Quedarius/pseuds/Quedarius) for all the hard work it took to get this story into shape on an already tight schedule.  
> -Thank you all for helping to make Tristhad Week such a big success! I still have a couple more days to go (See you tomorrow for the end of Spy Game), but the turnout was really surprisingly good.

**Author's Note:**

> -The title comes from James Baldwin's book _Giovanni's Room_ , “Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”  
> -Harviu and Dunndubhan had a meaning from somewhere but I have forgotten and can't seem to find my source.  
> -This work patiently beta'd by the talented Quedarius (http://archiveofourown.org/users/Quedarius/pseuds/Quedarius), so let us all ~~throw~~ bring potatoes.


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